Walfie's Nonograms
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Playing in a dedicated Game Boy emulator is recommended if you want to persist your save data reliably.
Walfie's Nonograms
A free nonogram puzzle game for the Game Boy Color, also compatible with monochrome Game Boy systems.
Play in your browser, in a Game Boy emulator (such as BGB, SameBoy, RetroArch frontend, etc), or on a real Game Boy (via flash cart).
This game also has RetroAchievements support!
Controls
| Game Boy | Browser | Action (Menu) | Action (Puzzle) |
| D-pad | ⬆⬇⬅➡ | Move selection | Move selection |
| A | Z | Confirm | Fill cell |
| B | X | Cancel | Mark cell as "X" |
| Start | Enter | Confirm | Open/close menu |
| Select | Shift | With ⬅➡: Change colors With ⬆⬇: Change BGM | Mark cell as "maybe" |
Features
- 150 puzzles (with sizes 5x5, 10x10, and 15x15)
- 31 color palettes
- 9 BGM songs (including songs from objetdiscret's Fabulous Classical Chiptunes)
- Save progress mid-puzzle and continue later
- Use Select to mark a cell as "maybe", as a note to yourself
- Mark numbered clues (like in Mario's Super Picross), to remember what you've solved
Credits
- Programming, Art, Puzzles: Walfie
- Music
- BGM 1-3: Matias Sosa (Commission)
- BGM 4-8: Fabulous Classical Chiptunes by objetdiscret (CC BY 4.0 license)
- BGM 9: Walfie
- Victory SFX/BGM: Free Gameboy UGE Music Asset Pack by beatscribe (CC0)
- Font: Condensed pixel font set for GB Studio by edo999
- Some puzzles: xtagtv, probsnotjack
- Special thanks: Kniffen's Nonogram Maker
- RetroAchievements support: Hexadigital
- The puzzle screen fonts are based on the ones from Mario's Picross and other Jupiter Picross games
For anyone interested in the development process of this game, I streamed the making of this game on my Twitch channel (see YouTube playlist for VODs).
Known Bugs
Pressing Start on the "Give up?" or "Save?" confirmation menus will cause the menu tiles to not show up correctly the next time you open the menu with Start. It will show the confirmation menu, but the options are actually the original four options (Save, BGM, Color, Give up). To fix this, press Start to open the menu, choose the first or fourth option with A, then exit the menu with B instead of Start.
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- v1.1.0 release (and thank you!)Feb 22, 2026
Comments
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I love this game, play it a lot a the moment! BUT what's up with 72? Restarted a few times and cant get a grip on it. Am I the only one struggling here?
Finished it last night in 20h 5m 58s
A good time was had. thank you.
Congrats, glad you had a good time with it!
Finally beat this after months! I was on 1.0.0 becayse I was worried updating would delete my save. I wonder how long it took me haha.
EDIT: I worked it out as 56729 seconds, or 15hrs, 45 mins, and 29 secs
EDIT2: Will there ever be a sequel?
Nice! It should be safe to update to the latest version, but I guess there’s not much reason to since you’ve already finished the game.
I’d like to make a sequel at some point, not sure when exactly but I think it’d be cool!
Great!
Been playing this and it's so fun and cute.
Thanks, glad you’re enjoying it!
I really love your game💚
Thank you!!
Having a lot of fun with the game on one of my retro handhelds. Have you ever considered adding in Super Gameboy frames to the game?
oh, I think I did consider this at some point during development and then totally forgot about it 😅
Played on my R36s and RG40XXV and it was awesome. The levels 114 and 140 were particularly tough but at least I made it!
Congrats and thanks for playing!
love this, its so neat and well made, would love to see a sequel, Mario picross introduced me to nonograms for the first time and going to this afterwards just felt perfect
Thanks, it’s definitely very much inspired by Mario Picross!
Good game
Thank you!
I've only started playing it but I'm having a good time so far. The music and graphics are great! More nonograms for the Gameboy is always welcome. I did notice a glitch, when I try to use Select + Down to change BGM it doesn't work. It just scrolls down like normal. I'm not sure if it's just me or what, I'm playing on an Everdrive X7 in-case that matters.
oh, weird… unfortunately I don’t have an Everdrive to be able to test it out myself, though I feel like others have definitely also played this on Everdrives so I think it should work 🤔
Amazing game!
I just finished all the puzzles slightly under 24h in the browser. I wish I had played it on an emulator. While I did afk a bit by mistake on some puzzles, there were a few that were quite hard and took multiple tries.
I highly recommend it to anyone who wants a chill puzzle game.
Congrats and thanks for playing!
Nice! I think this is the first time seeing someone complete the game on the original Game Boy.
I imagine it’s hard to tell the difference between marked/unmarked numbers due to the lack of contrast between the two darkest shades of green, but congrats on making it all the way through!
Yeah, I ended up not using that feature all that much unless the lighting was really good at the time. Even then, it was still a bit of a challenge! I'm pretty good about keeping that in my head at least, but there was definitely some tricky puzzles that I waited until I had good lighting for.
The [Select] Button being a note-taker makes solving each puzzle an enjoyable challenge …Not a cakewalk, but the journey is sweet, at least
Glad you’re enjoying it!
Amazing puzzles! I get addicted so fast!
Thank you!
Very nice, I just finished, it was addictive
Congrats!!
What a lovely game!!
I have discovered Nonograms so I started looking for titles, besides Mario Picross to play on my Miyoo Mini. I play this for weeks now - I dont get tired of it!!
Congrats to the simple and clever UX/UI design!
Left a small donation - THANK U 🙏 🌸
Thanks for the support!
Love this so much! Thanks
Glad you’re enjoying it!
you have single handedly introduced and made me addicted to nonograms, as punishment you must make more.
Glad to see new players being introduced to the genre! I will probably make a sequel eventually!
It took some time, but I've now finished all of the puzzles! A great time, lovely music loops, cute graphics and nice color schemes. I'm glad I played this!
Congrats and thanks for playing!
Finally finished all 150 puzzles! I had to get help from you on one of them, but otherwise, it was a really pleasant way to kill time when I had a few minutes. Always down for more picross goodness. (Also if you do another one someday and are looking for a musician/tester, I'm down)
Thanks for playing! I’ll probably make a sequel at some point 🙂↕️
I did it :) I had to get help for about, eh, maybe ten puzzles? But I did it! This was lots of fun.
Nice, congrats!! Thanks for playing!
Just finished all 150 puzzles, congrats on making this awesome game!! I enjoyed it so much.
Congrats and thanks for playing!! Glad you enjoyed it!
This game is quite fun. Got stuck on puzzle 109 but maybe I can come back to finish this at some point.
Oh, I remember that one being tricky. In case you’re still stuck and want to see someone’s playthrough of that level, I have a YouTube recording from when I was playtesting it. Good luck!
I HAVE DONE IT! I spent probably multiple weeks doing these, amd I thoroughly enjoyed all of them! Thank you Walfies <3
Congrats and thanks for playing!!
Almost done with this game, only to realize that it shares some music with Taiyaki Fabulous Museum of Fish (one of my favorites <3) GOSH THIS GAME IS SO CUTE >w<
Thank you! Thanks especially to objetdiscret (creator of Taiyaki Fabulous Museum of Fish) for making the music freely available for anyone to use!
Love the game, it’s very polished and charming!
One thing is I seem easily distracted by ongoing motion such as clocks incrementing. It might be convenient to have an option to turn off the clock ticking. No worries if not of course, and I’ve rom patched it out for the time being anyhow.
Btw, added it to our gbdk showcase. https://gbdk-2020.github.io/gbdk-2020-gallery/?sortSelector=Featured
Thanks again for making and sharing this!
Thanks for playing (and for your contributions to GBDK)!
With the way the code is set up currently, adding any extra options is a lot more involved than I’d like, but I think if I end up making a sequel, I’ll see if I can have an option to hide the timer.
Yeah the ui part is often that way. :)
Thanks for the reply!
I'm stuck on Level 56, I keep getting stuck with space missing or extra space with nowhere to go. Maybe I just need to sleep on it.
Good luck!! I have a recording of my playthrough of level 56 on YouTube in case you’re still stuck (admittedly not the best example since I also made some mistakes).
Thank you, I got there on my own just now. That was a tough one!
For those wondering, you should be going for the 2/2/5 next on what the 5 shares
This is super fun! I never understood how nonograms worked, so I haven't tried any, but I'm glad I tried this one! After reading the how-to-play it became less intimidating and I feel great each time I finish a puzzle. Only on the 7th puzzle but I just wanted to say how fun this is.
Thanks for checking it out! And sorry if some of the early puzzles are a bit tricky, the difficulty ramp isn’t the best 😅
I kept being interested in trying nongrams, but kept not having the rules explained well to me and this is such a great game to jump right in on! This has been my short break puzzle game at work for the last week and it's fabulous!
Thanks! When I first started playing nonograms, I found the Wikipedia article to be a good explanation of some common strategies, which really helped me a lot.
This is fantastic this helps me during school so much I love your nonograms !!
Thank you!!
The most fun I've had on gameboy in a long while! Thank you so much, Walfie. I'll be first in line if there's a sequel!
Thanks! Glad you’re having fun with it!
This is really good!
Thank you!
I'm literally obsessed with this game oh my god I love you Walfie!! This is so good!! Thank you for making this <3
Congrats on finishing the game, and thanks for playing!
To think that the same person that created the Walfas would end up having similar tastes to me...
As a nonogram enthusiast since Mario's Picross, I just knew I was going to love this one. Kudos to you, Walfie!
Glad you’re enjoying it!!
Very adorable and polished! I've gotten quite addicted to playing this on a GBC (via an Everdrive) and it feels like the best Nonogram/Picross on the Gameboy!
Thanks for your kind words!
I love this! It's so charming and pretty... It's recently been my focus aid for things like meditation and lectures. I'm mostly playing on my phone with an emulator theme I made. I've played through level 105, and I don't want it to end.
I was lucky that a friend sent it to me shortly after I started looking for nonogram games for Steam Deck. You should consider putting it on Steam! I think you'd get plenty of bites for ~$10. (You could pad it to 16:9 with Super Game Boy borders...?)
Thank you! I think putting it on Steam would be a lot more effort since I’d need to package it with an emulator and do a bunch of testing to verify it works (I noticed it doesn’t work well on some emulators), and Steam users usually expect achievements and mouse input for these sorts of games.
Nice picross game for Game Boy Color.
That’s a very nice GBC!
This is fantastic <3 sending love from RetroAchievements :D
Thanks!! Hexadigital did a great job adding the RetroAchievements integration.
Love this! Come back to it every so often when I need a break from work, and do a puzzle or two!
Thank you!
Just loaded this up on my Anbernic, and it's great! Good work!
Nice! I had a good time playtesting this on my Anbernic device as well, it’s definitely a nice way to play these kinds of games.